ACE Group Classic: Hal Sutton feeling good after second hip replacement

SCOTT MCINTYRE/STAFF
Ace Group Classic player Hal Sutton tees off from the second hole at Twin Eagles Golf Club on Wednesday Feb. 12, 2014.

Hal Sutton’s hips are squared. The Champions Tour player is coming into 2014 with his second hip replacement in two years.

“I had the hip replacement the year before that, and I thought that was going to be enough,” Sutton said. “It wasn’t. The other hip was just as bad.”

The 1983 PGA Championship winner played 14 events last year, and ended his season in August. He came back to see Dr. Mort Bertram in Naples. Again. Bertram replaced Sutton’s left hip on Oct. 11, 2012.

The two got together through a mutual friend with a mutual problem. Bonita Springs’ Peter Jacobsen, the two-time Champions Tour major winner and NBC Sports golf analyst, had his hip replaced by Bertram a few years ago.

“If you need a hip done, come see my guy, Mort Bertram, and just talk to him,” Jacobsen said he told Sutton. “This guy Mort is one of the greatest guys in the world, and he’s a great doctor. I gave him his number, and he and Mort developed a pretty good relationship.”

Bertram learned from another doctor who had replaced a hip in a prominent golfer. Ben Bierbaum replaced Jack Nicklaus’ hip with a ceramic-based one in 1999. Fourteen years later, Bertram used a Stryker Mobile Bearing Hip in Sutton.

Normally, recovery involves using a cane for 10 days or so, and being able to drive a car in three to four weeks. Sutton was without a cane after three days.

“Hal did phenomenally well,” Bertram said. “He’s a really tough guy anyway. He just doesn’t feel pain. He’s just not normal that way.”

However, Sutton was feeling pain before the replacement. Each morning, it’d take 15 seconds before he could muster enough energy to get out of bed. When he’d get in a car, Sutton had to put his butt in the seat and swing his leg over.

“I get in the car like I used to when I was 20 now,” Sutton said. “It’s truly amazing how it transforms your life. I felt old.”

Sutton’s swing is closer to normal, too. The 14-time winner on the PGA Tour can turn back and turn through the ball. That doesn’t mean everything is fixed, though.

“I had developed a lot of bad habits when I was just swinging with my arms because I couldn’t move my hips, so I’ve got to break those,” said the design consultant with Arthur Hills on Naples’ TPC Treviso Bay. “I asked (Dr. Bertram) if he could go ahead and take the demons out of my head when he had me under, but he decided he wasn’t qualified to do that.”

Sutton tied for 46th at last week’s Allianz Championship in Boca Raton. But he walked without any pain, and without limping.

That’s a far cry from where Sutton was — taking Advil and trying to grind his way through the pain in his right hip, which developed only a few months after his left hip replacement. Bertram gave Sutton an indication that would happen after looking at X-rays and an MRI.

“There’s always hope that it’s going to get better, but it’s not,” said Sutton, who’s lost 40 pounds.

Sutton learned from putting off having his hips replaced.

“My advice to anybody out there that’s trying to play golf with severe joint pain — stop, get the joint replaced, and then go back and play golf,” he said.